1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card slot connector for making a required electrical connection between a secure digital memory card (abbreviated as SD card) and the printed circuit of a circuit board, on which the connector is mounted. Such card slot connectors are used in small-sized electronic devices such as digital cameras, cellular phones, MP3 (MPG Audio layer-3) or PDA (Personal Digital Assistants).
2. Related Art
Referring to FIGS. 7(A)-(D) and 8(A) and (B), a conventional card slot connector 11 is fixed to a printed circuit board 10, permitting an SD memory card 7 (see FIGS. 5(A) and (B)) to be inserted in or removed from its slot 11a for connection to or disconnection from the printed circuit.
The card slot connector 11 comprises: a housing 13 of a synthetic resin material having a plurality of contact pieces 12 embedded therein, and a flat, shielding metal shell 14 applied to one side of the housing 13, and a push—push switch 6 attached to one longitudinal side of the housing 13, extending in the direction in which a card is inserted and removed. The contact pieces 12 are soldered to selected conductors in the printed circuit.
As seen from FIG. 7(B), the card slot connector 11 is fixed to the printed circuit board 10 with its metal shell 14 located on the printed circuit board 10. A grounding contact piece 15 of the metal shell 14 may be kept in contact with a grounding terminal 7b of an SD memory card 7 (see FIG. 5(A)) when the card 7 is inserted in the card slot connector 11, so that the grounding terminal 7b may be connected to the grounding terminal of the printed circuit board 10 via the grounding contact piece 15 of the metal shell 14.
Disadvantageously this arrangement prevents electronic devices and parts from being mounted in the area of the printed circuit board occupied by the card slot connector 11 with the metal shell 14 located on the printed circuit board 10, which metal shell 14 would short-circuit electronic devices and parts if they are put between the metal plate 14 and the circuit board 10. As the parts-loading density per unit area of a printed circuit board increases, a demand is increased for making full use of the surface area of the printed circuit board including that occupied by the card slot connector.
One object of the present invention is to provide a card slot connector to meet such a demand, permitting electronic parts or devices to be mounted on the area occupied by the card slot connector.